


chains of fear and gratitude

by tonepoem



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Jedao Lives, Gen, even Kujen has moments of something resembling mercy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 21:05:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16502702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonepoem/pseuds/tonepoem
Summary: Kujen offers Jedao a priceless gift to go with his punishment after the battle at the Fortress of Scattered Needles.Canon-divergence: the end of Ninefox Gambit.





	chains of fear and gratitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neuxue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuxue/gifts).



Hexarch Nirai Kujen was examining his liquor cabinet when they brought the general in.

"Set him down over there," he said, waving a hand at a conspicuously empty space in the room with its display cases and bookshelves. He didn't read much anymore, didn't have the time for it. Tyranny required a certain work ethic.

"Nirai-zho," the sergeant said, and the four Kel soldiers carried the casket over to the place Kujen had indicated and set it down. "Do you require anything else, Nirai-zho?"

Kujen was tired of the Kel and their endless honorifics. Tired of the black uniforms, the gold braid, the endless procession of insignia. "No," he said curtly. "I'll call Kel Command if that changes."

Once the Kel had exited and Kujen couldn't hear the thumping of their boots anymore--really, did they ever march _quietly?_ \--he crossed the room to the casket. He checked over the status panels on the casket, which monitored the vital signs of General Jedao's current anchor. Blood pressure was a little low, but everything else looked fine. Everything else damn well _be_ fine. He'd spent a lot of time and no little money designing this anchor, including the mods that made him resemble Jedao as he'd been in life, minus of some of the more extreme scars.

"Time to wake up," Kujen murmured. After the fiasco at the Fortress of Scattered Needles, he wanted to hear Jedao's account of the whole stupid sequence of events that had led to a firefight between Jedao's warmoths and those of the relief swarm. He'd have been able to retrieve Jedao's ghost no matter what happened, but why had Jedao felt the need to cause him the additional aggravation?

Tyranny also came with a price tag. All the money that he'd had to authorize not just on cleaning up the whole operation, but covering it up, was money that couldn't be spent on infrastructure improvements, or research and development, or feeding hungry civilians. Jedao always acted like it surprised him that Kujen cared about such details, as if he had nothing better to do than run an empire into the ground for the hell of it.

Kujen's fingers flickered over the controls. The status lights glowed red as the casket began to cycle. Murky fluids drained away, and at last the casket opened with a sigh of chilly vapor.

Jedao looked terrible. The pallor of his skin had a greenish undertone, and bruises shadowed his eyes. His eyelids were almost translucent, and his hair clung damply to his forehead. Even unconscious, the rest of the aesthetically improved body that Kujen had provided for him, unclothed, betrayed a terrible tension.

Kujen retrieved a syringe and jabbed it expertly into Jedao's arm. Jedao's eyelids flickered. Kujen waited, patient as ever, for the other man to wake.

Finally Jedao's eyes opened, focused on Kujen. "Where--" He was wracked by a coughing fit.

"Good evening, _General_ ," Kujen said. "Do you want clothes first, or something to drink?"

Jedao slowly clambered out of the casket, then glanced around the room. Assessing cover and sight lines and exit routes, that kind of shit, no doubt. "I'll take the water," he said, his voice still hoarse. "It's not like _modesty_ matters between the two of us."

Kujen ignored the jibe and poured water from a pitcher into an exquisite crystal glass. "Here you go."

"Thank you," Jedao said, with just a hint of sarcasm, and downed the water.

Next Kujen handed him a towel and watched wordlessly while Jedao dried himself off.

"What is it about Nirai and slime, anyway?" Jedao wondered.

"It's _very expensive_ slime," Kujen said. "There are spas that would pay me handsomely for a supply of the stuff."

Jedao wrinkled his nose. "It smells terrible."

Kujen was aware of _that_ , but the side-effect of a long background in science was becoming inured to terrible smells. " _You_ didn't pay me handsomely for the perfumed version."

Jedao began limbering up, starting with the simplest stretches. "If there are any contraindications, I hope you'll let me know before I give myself a hernia."

Kujen rolled his eyes. He was accustomed to this routine. "It's a healthy body. Do I ever give you anything but healthy bodies?"

"There was that one Kel who couldn't tolerate gluten."

"Besides that."

Jedao had satisfied himself that the anchor was functional and tried a plank, just because.

"If you absolutely must do a hundred push-ups to prove the size of your dick, do it on your own time," Kujen said.

Jedao sprang up on the balls of his feet. "Did you have some _reason_ for bringing me here, Nirai-zho?" he asked pointedly. "Because some of us could be enjoying some nice sensory-deprivation R&R."

"Yes, about that," Kujen said. "Why don't you get dressed and explain to me what the hell you were thinking at Scattered Needles." He pointed at the clothes, including a Kel uniform, that a servant had left neatly pressed and folded on a side table.

Jedao shrugged and obliged him. The uniform was a little long at the sleeves, a little tight at the shoulders, but the material reshaped itself to fit him. Kujen resolved to have a word with the Kel quartermaster who'd supplied him with the damn thing.

"It was worth a try?" Jedao offered. "Surely you never expected me to be _tame_." He eased himself into one of Kujen's armchairs, uninvited, and propped his feet up on a footrest. "Call it a preparedness test."

"I didn't realize you were so eager to add more deaths to your conscience," Kujen said, and retrieved a bottle of whiskey from his liquor cabinet.

Jedao's crooked smile flashed at him. "Why, I'm so flattered you care," he said. "What's the whiskey, by the way?"

Kujen poured for them both, passed a snifter over.

Jedao smiled again, and tasted it. "Peaty," he said. "With that odd note of vanilla. Interesting combination, in interesting proportions." He gave Kujen a hard look. "I haven't tasted anything like this since--"

"This bottle is contraband," Kujen informed him, "but since I get to make the rules..."

Jedao's expression froze. "You're not implying--"

"There's a _reason_ I keep telling the Kel border patrols to turn a blind eye to some of the smuggling," Kujen said. "Even a police state needs an escape valve or three." He grinned at Jedao. "And besides, sometimes smugglers are _useful_. Yes: that's whiskey from the Hafn Empire, specifically the planet that used to be your homeworld."

The whiskey in the snifter trembled, catching the light like a miniature amber sea. Jedao inhaled deeply, then took another sip. "I don't understand you at all," he said.

Kujen wasn't fooled; anytime Jedao revealed vulnerability, it was for a purpose. But two could play at that game. "You're the only one who remembers," Kujen said, his voice deliberately soft. "You may be a few centuries younger than I am, but we're all that's left of the heptarchate. No one else knows, not even the historians. It's not the same."

"Pretty words," Jedao said; but his voice shook.

Kujen shrugged. "I may punish you--" He snapped his fingers, and all the lights went off, even the red status lights of the casket Jedao had arrived in. The sudden, absolute darkness was filled with the sound of Jedao's shallow, panicked breathing. "But I'll never destroy you. Not when all we have is each other."

"I _failed_ , Nirai-zho," Jedao said. "I didn't escape. You won."

Kujen heard Jedao gulping down the rest of the whiskey. Smelled it, too. Took a first sip of his own. "Beg me for the light," he said, "and perhaps you can have another glass."

"Fuck you."

"Not _that_ kind of begging."

Jedao's momentary silence was hostile. Then he said, "Please turn on the lights, Nirai-zho. So I can enjoy the rest of what has got to be the last bottle of Shparoi whiskey in the entire damn hexarchate before you put me back in the black cradle."

Jedao didn't promise to stop his attempts to escape Kujen's control, which was just as well, because Kujen wouldn't have believed him. Kujen waited several moments, during which Jedao's breathing became increasingly ragged. Then he snapped his fingers again, and light flooded the room.

Jedao's snifter was already empty. "More?" Kujen asked.

"Please."

It was not friendship, and never would be. But even Jedao, for all his defiance, recognized that there was a sense in which all they had was each other.

Toward the end of the bottle, Kujen said, in all sincerity, "Better luck next time."

Jedao laughed scornfully. "There's no such thing as luck, only preparation. And you're always better prepared."

Kujen lifted a shoulder, lowered it. "You keep my life interesting," he said. "There aren't a lot of people I can say that of after all these years."

Jedao was quiet for a time. At last he said, "Thank you for the whiskey."

"It was the least I could do," Kujen said, thinking not of Jedao's homeworld but his own. But that was one story he wasn't going to share, even with Jedao. He was already thinking ahead to what he'd do the next time Jedao tried to break free, forge chains of fear and gratitude. "Are you ready?"

Jedao flinched. "You know I'm never ready," he said. "But yes, it's time."

Kujen spoke words of command to the grid. Technicians entered the room. "Take him to the black cradle," he said, and watched as Jedao was led away. Then he replaced the whiskey bottle, now empty, in his cabinet, as a reminder.


End file.
